Research

The Department of Political Science is actively involved in key international professional and research organizations. It has intensive collaboration with several high-profile institutions in Europe and in the world, which has resulted from work on common research projects. The Department of Political Science, as the only department of its kind in Slovakia, has been, since 1998, a member of a prominent European professional organization directed at research, European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), and has been actively involved in its activities. Since 1991 the department has been home to the Slovak Association for Political Science.

Since 2005 the department has coordinated and worked on several domestic and international research projects, funded by the grant agencies VEGA, APVV and Jean Monnet, or under the Fifth and Sixth Framework EU Programmes for Research and Development and the state programme for research and development, and by numerous domestic and international foundations supporting research and development. Individual projects have probed into the external and internal conditions of formation of the political system in Slovakia, the political changes affected by Slovakia’s accession to the European Union, the process of formation of national preferences and strategies with the EU, the problems of identity, representation and governance at the level of elites, experts, the public and media, or the interests and identities of ethnic minorities. The department has initiated and worked on interdisciplinary research projects funded from the EU structural funds. For example, it has conducted research into social innovations which may enhance the contribution Slovakia makes to the overall growth of the European Union’s competitiveness.